2008.11.14

Pick-a-fight Friday ... Mix-in-a-jar. Yes or no?

If you are just batching up
something for the sake of giving out a "homemade" gift, please don't
bother. I'm sorry if this offends anyone, but I really hate those dang
"gifts in a jar" where hotcocoa mix, milk powder and marshmallows, or
Jiffy cornbread mix, or whatever is layered into a mason jar. That
doesn't say "Christmasariffic! How innovative and delightful!" to me;
that says "Someone needed to check the box on thirty acquaintances so
she went to Costco and bought ten pounds of Swiss Miss."

Have any of you ever read Betty MacDonald's The Plague and I, wherein she expounds on "toecovers," or those gifty items that seem to exist for no other reason than to be inflicted upon someone else in a spirit of generosity (or obligation)?

My definition of toecover includes the mix-in-a-jar gift. (One year, I got seven-bean soup. Anyone who knows me is snickering, but I assure you, I was gracious.) Or those bottles of mystery oil in which some radioactive red peppers are suspended -- those are toecovers.

Or bath salts. As a militant non-bath person (oh, God, the idea of poaching myself in my own scum ... shudder), I include schmancy bath salts or those weird jelly-textured marbles of bath oil as toecovers.

But I get that for some people, receiving some beans in a jar channels the very spirit of Christmas. Or for some people, lovingly ladling pancake mix into jars, then hot-gluing ribbons to the lid reminds them of what really matters for the holidays.

So I'm throwing it open to you, the people. What are your toecovers? And what seemingly toecover-like gifts do you secretly love to receive?

I just wanted to note that I spent Christmas at my parents', and the very first gift I opened from them was...a necklace. The second was a summer-weight scarf.

The third was a blender, which is something I actually badly need and asked for, so yay to them for that (and there were no diet books, which is always good). But it was pretty hard not to laugh out loud when I opened the first two presents.